by death; what death?--Know you disease?
Or horrid war?--With war, this fatal hour, 1782
Europa groans (so call we a small field,
Where kings run mad). In our world, Death deputes
Intemperance to do the work of Age;
And hanging up the quiver Nature gave him,
As slow of execution, for despatch
Sends forth imperial butchers; bids them slay
Their sheep (the silly sheep they fleeced before),
And toss him twice ten thousand at a meal. 1790
Sit all your executioners on thrones?
With you, can rage for plunder make a god?
And bloodshed wash out every other stain?--
But you, perhaps, can't bleed: from matter gross
Your spirits clean, are delicately clad
In fine-spun ether, privileged to soar,
Unloaded, uninfected; how unlike
The lot of man! how few of human race
By their own mud unmurder'd! how we wage
Self-war eternal!--Is your painful day 1800
Of hardy conflict o'er? or, are you still
Raw candidates at school? and have you those
Who disaffect reversions, as with us?--
But what are we? You never heard of man;
Or earth, the bedlam of the universe!
Where Reason (undiseased with you) runs mad,
And nurses Folly's children as her own;
Fond of the foulest. In the sacred mount 1808
Of holiness, where Reason is pronounced
Infallible; and thunders, like a god;
Even there, by saints, the demons are outdone;
What these think wrong, our saints refine to right;
And kindly teach dull hell her own black arts;
Satan, instructed, o'er their morals smiles.--
But this, how strange to you, who know not man!
Has the least rumour of our race arrived?
Call'd here Elijah in his flaming car?
Pass'd by you the good Enoch, on his road
To those fair fields, whence Lucifer was hurl'd;
Who brush'd, perhaps, your sphere in his descent, 1820
Stain'd your pure crystal ether, or let fall
A short eclipse from his portentous shade?
O that the fiend had lodged on some broad orb
Athwart his way; nor reach'd his present home,
Then blacken'd earth with footsteps foul'd in hell,
Nor wash'd in ocean, as from Rome he pass'd
To Britain's isle; too, too, conspicuous there!"
But this is all digression: where is He,
That o'er heaven's battlements the felon hurl'd
To groans, and chains, and darkness? Where is He, 1830
Who sees creati